What Is This Electric London Taxi Doing On A Polish Highway?

First responders (paramedics especially) undoubtedly see all sorts of weird things over the course of their shifts. Most of those, we’re sure, wouldn’t be fit to publish here, but when Paweł Pobiega spotted this camouflaged prototype on the highway in Poland, he sent it straight away to our attention.

Without the dome light and the black livery, this might be mistaken for a new entry into the bizarre segment that gave us such long-gone oddities as the Nissan Cube, Honda Element, Scion xB (not to mention the Kia Soul). But what we seem to have here looks to be actually a version of the new TX5 cab made by the London Taxi Company.

Just what it’s up to might remain a mystery if not for the big yellow sign on the back that reads “Warning: Electric Vehicle” with a lightning-bolt hazard sign.

Now the TX5 is already a plug-in hybrid, which might otherwise be referred to as a range-extended electric vehicle. So this prototype could be hiding nothing new that we already haven’t seen. But it could be a purer EV which no internal-combustion engine at all.

As for what it’s doing in Poland, we’re not sure. LTC is, of course, a British company, owned by Geely (which is based in China). Volvo has a manufacturing facility in Poland, but that’s the bus and truck company – not the passenger carmaker also owned by Geely. Of course automakers are known to test their cars in locations far away from their home bases, but Poland isn’t quite far north enough to compete with Scandinavia for cold-weather testing in the ice and snow.

Photo Gallery